...Members of Congress and U.S. Presidents since the founding of the nation.

...Terms held in office by Members of Congress and U.S. Presidents. Each term corresponds with an election, meaning each term in the House covers two years (one 'Congress'), as President four years, and in the Senate six years (three 'Congresses').

...Roll call votes in the U.S. Congress since 1789. How people voted is accessed through the Vote_voter API.

...How people voted on roll call votes in the U.S. Congress since 1789. See the Vote API. Filter on the vote field to get the results of a particular vote...

I've been looking over Open Dems, and seeing what's exposed at this
point and what isn't. I work with Democrats Abroad, and am interested
in using stuff from the lab for their sites.

I quickly looked over the Precinct API, which does both more and less
than what I'd need. An ideal resource would be any way of translating
addresses into CD at the very least (getting state district data would
be good as well), since that would make it easier for DA's membership
to make a difference in races like last month's NY26 race...

Update

I'm looking at the source for the govtrack.us website and the 'doGeoCode' function may be useful.

view-source:http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members

If no one has any suggestions, I will try to go off of what they are doing.

3 Answers
3

I haven't used it, but a quick search brought me to Congress API from Sunlight Labs. Check out their districts.getDistrictsFromZip method -- it seems to be what you're looking for. You might get better (more accurate) results geocoding the address yourself and then using districts.getDistrictFromLatLong -- I'd assume that a given zip code could cross district boundaries.

I realize this question is old, but I figured I'd throw in my two cents for anyone who might still be looking.

First, some background info. Congressional districts are extremely specific - down to an address itself, not just the street. Me and my neighbor across the street could be in different congressional districts. This is why it's so important to get a good ZIP+4 code to ensure that you're placing the address in the correct district. A system (like SmartyStreets or Melissa Data or QAS, etc.) that does address validation would give you a reliable ZIP+4 to ensure that the district is correct.

SmartyStreets has their LiveAddress API, which returns congressional data along with over 40 other data points (geocodes, residential vs commercial, etc.).

... though, it says that zip+4 should get you to a building and includes information like what side of the street you are on. So maybe, but then consider that the set of zip+4 that maps to a district would be the number of buildings in that district which could get unwieldy.
–
MichaelTApr 25 '14 at 23:18

Melissa Data makes tools for address verification that includes information on political districts. I do not know if they have a public api; the link above will take you to an address look up page. They offer a limited number of free look ups that can be increased with a subscription. Please check their terms of use before putting this into a production application.

While their data is updated monthly, I have noticed that some of it does not reflect recent redistricting.

Many states have this information available, but I doubt that there is any consistency in their implementation.